On the Environment
Environmental Attitudes & Behavior

On February 28, 2015, students, faculty, community leaders, businesspeople, and government officials alike gathered at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies for the 5th annual New Directions in Environmental Law Conference: Harnessing Momentum.

Harnessing Momentum brought together environmental thought-leaders from across the country for a day of dialogue and a show of solidarity. Convened against the backdrop of the People’s Climate March, the U.S.-China Climate Change and Clean Energy Commitment, and the upcoming COP 21 negotiations in Paris, conference participants discussed ways to channel energy to make 21stCentury environmental solutions a reality. Panels and workshops examined innovative solutions and promises to exact real, lasting change, from local communities to national arenas to the international stage.

Mayor Toni Harp delivered the opening address, exploring how the city of New Haven has dedicated itself to a sustainable future and acknowledging the magnitude of work that still needs to be done. U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D – RI) delivered the keynote address, presenting his solutions and strategies in the national government. There is still optimism. There is still hope. There is still momentum to generate policies that will propel the United States to the vanguard of environmental progress.

Panel discussions explored environmental communications—how to reach and engage new communities and how to most effectively catalyze action on environmental policy—and the U.S.-China Commitment—how to hold true to our commitment of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Workshops covered a wide range of topics, from climate change issues in Indian Country to environmental justice in overburdened communities.

Throughout the conference, participants engaged in lively dialogue on the most important issues of the day. The event created networks of engaged citizenry and connected them to journalists, professors, organizers, and policymakers. Though New Directions in Environmental Law was only a daylong event, its impact will extend long past February 28th.

As part of a major restructuring of the country’s legal framework, in 2008 Ecuador adopted a new Constitution by means of a national referendum. The 2008 Constitution – the country’s 20th – had a special component that made it different from any other constitution worldwide: it was the first Constitution to grant essential rights to Nature. Under Article 71 of the 2008 Constitution, “Nature or Pachamama, where life is reproduced and exists, has the right to exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles, structure, functions and evolutionary processes.” Under this framework, Nature becomes a subject of rights and “any person will be able to demand the recognition of the rights of nature before public organisms.”

Seven years have passed since Ecuador adopted the 2008 Constitution and yet the actual implementation of the Rights of Nature in Ecuador continues to be widely debated. In an effort to clarify the current status of the Rights of Nature in Ecuador, the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy (YCELP) invited Natalia Greene to its webinar series on “Democratizing Environmental Protection”, held on February 6th 2015.

Natalia Green is an Ecuadorian environmental leader who played a monumental role in the adoption of the Rights of Nature in Ecuador’s National Constitution. Along with a group of Ecuadorian environmental activists and representatives from the civil society, Natalia voiced the plea for legally recognizing the protection of nature. Her efforts were rewarded when the Ecuadorian Government accepted the request, as part of a larger movement towards progressivism as embodied in the theoretical framework of the “citizen’s revolution.”

Natalia began her webinar presentation by describing the reasons why Ecuador was the first country to declare the Rights of Nature on its Constitution. As Natalia indicated, one of the main explanationsis the country’s outstanding biodiversity. In terms of number of species of both fauna and flora per hectare, Ecuador is considered one of the most biodiverse countries worldwide. And yet, most of this biodiversity is severely threatened by the expansion of human presence in natural areas. More specifically, one of the major threats to the country’s biodiversity is the construction of roads that give access to oil and mineral reserves located in the heart of the country’s Amazon. In particular, Natalia referred to the case of Yasuní National Park and Biosphere Reserve, an area that became globally recognized for its biodiversity and for the debate that originated around the conflicting interests of conservation and oil extraction inside the protected area.

Later in her presentation, Natalia described what the Rights of Nature represent, as indicated by the Ecuadorian Constitution, and how they fit into the country’s “Wellbeing Development Model”. This Model, advocated by the Ecuadorian Government, includes Nature as a transversal component of its development apparatus. For example, the Model is meant to guide the country’s development away from its heavy reliance on fossil fuels and natural resources and towards an economy that flourishes on the basis of knowledge, cultural richness and biodiversity capital.

Subsequently, Natalia recognized some instances in which the Rights of Nature were respected in Ecuador, even prior to the 2008 Constitution. Examples include the Galapagos Vilcabamba road case and the shark finning prohibition in the Galapagos Islands. However, Natalia expressed a deep concern for the cases where the Rights of Nature have been violated in the country, questioning the legitimacy and abiding power of the 2008 Constitution. The lack of protection of the Tangabana highlands in the province of Chimborazo, an ecosystem of great importance for water and carbon capture, became the first case of a lost demand for the Rights of Nature.

Another case is the open-pit mining project in El Condor Mirador, an area with many endemic specie. In this instance local communities pointed to the project’s environmental impact assessment, which confirmed the project’s contamination would cause extinction of at least three endemic amphibian species and one reptile species. Despite this risk, the project proceeded. This represented a direct violation to Article 73 in the Constitution, which asserts that “the State will apply precaution and restriction measures in all activities that can lead to the extinction of species, the destruction of ecosystems or the permanent alteration of natural cycles”. Moreover, Natalia included the decision to exploit Yasuní National Park as another example of the Government’s flexible interpretation of the Constitution.

Natalia’s presentation concluded with a reflection on how the Rights of Nature constitute an opportunity to change the paradigm and to rethink humanity’s development in harmony with Nature. The presentation was followed by questions from the webinar attendees, which centered around the speaker’s vision for the future of the Rights of Nature, the role that international courts can play, the results of actions by civil society groups in Yasuní and the characterization of the voluntarily isolated indigenous communities that live in the area. In answering these questions, Natalia showed her broad experience in the topic and her unique insights as someone who has committed her career to promoting environmental justice.

Ecuador’s adoption of the Rights of Nature in the National Constitution was a revolutionary move that embodies the country’s political transformation over the past decade. As shown by Natalia’s presentation, the implementation of the country’s new legal framework, including the Rights of Nature, is far from perfect and there is still much to be done to achieve a full recognition of the intrinsic value of Nature. However, as Natalia recognized, this bold move has opened up a space for a different discussion about the environment and conservation that was previously inexistent.

Moving forward, the challenge will be for Ecuador to continue on its path towards human wellbeing by truly acting in accordance to its new constitutional principles. Sincere commitment to protect Nature’s right to persist and to be maintained should not be conditional to capricious human needs and desires. Otherwise the concept of granting essential rights to Nature should be reconsidered in terms of the real capacity and willingness of the State to respect them. Ecuador has an opportunity to become a global example of development in the right direction, one that truly “loves life,” as the country’s slogan claims. Will it take it?

By 2100 it may be impossible for humans to work outside. If the world continues on its business-as-usual growth trajectory, global temperatures could rise beyond 95 degrees Fahrenheit – the highest tolerable “wet bulb temperature” – as the new norm in many parts of the world. Particularly in urban areas, where heat island effects can add up to 10 degrees Fahrenheit, temperatures would be especially unbearable.

How do we avoid such a bleak future? On June 19, Diana Ürge-Vorsatz – coordinating lead author of the buildings chapter of the IPCC’s 5th Assessment Report on Climate Change Mitigation – shared her thoughts here at Yale on the potential to counter climate change through building efficiency.

The map in the top right-hand corner shows the BAU greenhouse gas emissions scenario, also known as RCP 8.5 in the scientific community.

Passive House Standard

Ürge-Vorsatz made the case, based on emissions data, that the most cost-effective way to mitigate climate change is through building efficiency improvements, compared to emissions reductions in other sectors. In particular, she highlighted one building concept – the passive house – that not only can guide reductions in our carbon footprint but also help us “weather the weather.”

The Passive House Standard, launched in Germany, specifically targets energy efficiency (in contrast to holistic standards like LEED). Employing high-quality insulation and ventilation, passive houses require incredibly little energy for space heating and cooling. Case studies show that passive houses reduce energy consumption by much as 80 to 90 percent compared to typical buildings in central Europe. The buildings themselves can be residential or nonresidential, new or retrofits, and are relatively low-cost over their lifetime, although they do require additional upfront costs for the design and higher-quality building components. Ürge-Vorsatz’s research conservatively estimates that if all current building stock were to achieve passive-house levels of energy reduction, world energy consumption would fall by 30 percent. These energy reductions could help us avoid the 2100 BAU scenario, though they would obviously need to happen sooner than later.

While it’s been proven that passive houses require very little energy to regulate temperature, can this technology be scaled? How well do passive houses perform outside of Central Europe, their temperate birthplace, particularly in more extreme climates? The airtight insulation of passive houses apparently excels in retaining warmth in cold climates, most prominently in Iceland where rough forms of the passive house date back to the Middle Ages. However, it was argued during the talk’s Q&A that while the concept is less adept at providing cooling in hot, humid climates. If this is true, how would passive houses fare in a country like India, which suffered its worst heat wave in over 60 years this summer?

Intrigued, we researched what work has been done to pilot passive houses in hot climates. A 2013 study by the Passive House Institute says passive house design can thrive in tropical climates (Jakarta, anyone?) if adjusted to include features such as interior insulation, solar control glazing, fixed window shades, and ventilation with heat and energy recovery.

Of course, it would help to know how much warm-climate adjustments would cost – particularly in developing countries where upfront costs may already be higher due to the relatively limited number of manufacturers that are versed in passive building components. To the extent that the passive house concept is flexible, countries can adapt it using their own design techniques.

Another area for exploration concerns air quality. Although passive houses should have good air quality by design and be made of non-toxic materials, any cutting of corners (e.g., substituting cheap toxic materials) could prove troublesome given the extreme insulation.

A global map of where passive houses are currently located is available here.

Living Building Challenge

Another green building concept, the Living Building Challenge (LBC) was presented on last week by the Connecticut Collaborative. LBC is the most stringent and holistic of green building certifications, surpassing both LEED and Passive House Standard in their approaches to efficiency.

The Living Building Challenge (LBC) incorporates criteria that are non-traditional metrics of green buildings, including considerations of equity, human health and happiness, and beauty. While LEED-certified buildings can still have negative environmental impacts, living buildings must provide real environmental benefits. For example, they must be net energy and water positive, and cannot use combustion-based energy sources.

While the LBC philosophy and movement are inspirational, it is hard not to recognize the uphill battle living buildings face in achieving commercial adoption. Currently, there are only five certified living buildings in the whole world. Building them can be cost-prohibitive, especially when current financial models for buildings don’t account for healthcare cost reductions, and increased productivity.

Getting retro right

Independently, the Passive House Standard and Living Building Challenge present two promising solutions to avoid the “lock-in” scenario Ürge-Vorsatz described. She stressed that shallow retrofits – anything resulting in less than 80 percent in energy reduction – are harmful, as they risk locking buildings into a path-dependent scenario of sub-optimal performance. Since both standards have stringent energy reduction requirements, they represent potential standards that could be scaled up and prevent the future nightmare BAU scenario of 2100.

If you want to get more involved with the Living Building Challenge, like “Living Building Challenge Connecticut Collaborative” on Facebook and check out the International Living Future Institute websitewhere you can sign up to be an ambassador.

On Wednesday, February 12, SmartPower President Brian Keane kicked off Yale’s Climate and Energy Bookshelf spring 2014 speaker series. Mr. Keane is president of SmartPower, a company dedicated to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and author of the recent Green is Good: Save Money, Make Money, and Help Your Community Profit from Clean Energy. His lecture at Yale F&ES, titled “50 Shades of Green” outlined strategies to help increase the use of renewable energy, to encourage behavior changes toward energy efficiency and other relevant public education initiatives to fight climate change.

Mr. Keane uses a multi-prong approach in his advocacy to tackle climate change. In the book, Mr. Keane outlines why adopting green technology is not only good for the environment, but can increase savings for individuals, businesses and society. His book shows that using renewables like solar energy is much easier than many people realize, and it is more acceptable to use in today’s society. It is becoming a norm for people who once consumed old greenhouse gas emitting technologies to make the switch toward greener technologies. For example, the US Department of Energy has also made it easier for Americans to achieve this goal, outlining other ways to save money and to find rebates and tax credits in individual states.

As president of SmartPower, Mr. Keane explained the approaches that his company uses to achieve their goals. SmartPower uses a form of community-based campaigning to encourage behavior change over the long term, and shows people that they truly can be part of the ‘50 shades of green’ movement as part of their efforts to reduce emissions. The main approach is called COR. It stands for efforts on Community outreach, Online platforms and social marketing (person to person outreach) and Rewards and Incentives. One example is SmartPower’s role in Solarize Connecticut, a partnership between Keane’s organization, the Connecticut Clean Energy Finance and Investment Authority and the John Mercke Fund, to increase the use of solar panels by homeowners, businesses and others in Connecticut. The organization provides countless workshops and other tools to help people understand the benefits and logistics of using solar energy. It keeps in touch with clients regularly and provides online assistance to encourage collaboration.

SmartPower is not looking at energy solutions in Connecticut alone. During the lecture, Mr. Keane discussed the Arizona Solar Challenge, which is an effort that seeks to increase the number of owner occupied homes using solar energy to at least 5 percent in sunny Arizona by 2015. If 5 percent of the total homes in a community reach this goal, SmartPower calls it an “Arizona Solar Community." So far, six communities throughout the state have been award this title, and a handful of others are heading that way. If the trend continues, it will mean a higher renewable energy profile for the whole state of Arizona. The Energy Information Agency ranks each state in terms amount of renewable energy capacity and generation, and partly by the efforts of SmartPower and others, Arizona already ranks in the top ten for renewable energy capacity. Everyone can check renewable energy usage statistics on their state here.

Renewable energy won’t be enough to reduce emissions though. Mr. Keane pointed out that despite living in homes and having infrastructure that is more energy efficient compared to the past, we are all still using more energy than we ever did before. Humans have to do more. Behavior changes at both the individual level and on the societal level will be key if we are ever to get serious about climate change. One of the behavior changes is to ensure that we understand why we are using more.

In his book and lecture, Mr. Keane called on consumers to become more “energy smart” and to reduce energy waste. One of the wastes that he wants to tackle is called “phantom load”. It is wasted energy by everyday household items such as microwaves that use more electricity by just sitting in the house and idly being plugged into an outlet. That means more energy is used to power the microwave clock than for the purpose of actually heating food. The Carbon Fund, a 501(c) 3 non-profit also dedicated to reducing emissions, has plenty of tips on how to reduce your individual energy waste including reducing phantom load. It also lists practical steps to reduce emissions, such ways to lessen the amount of junk mail sent to you which would reduce paper use and mail distribution costs.

All of this highlights a debate on what is the most effective way to combat climate change. It is a question of whether to work towards more command and control regulations, or to focus on voluntary measures such as encouraging more energy efficient industrial and consumer behavior. Here in the US, the EPA is confronting a new Supreme Court challenge from industry groups that say EPA is overstepping its authority on regulating greenhouse gas emissions. This new case will test whether or not the EPA has the authority on a new rule that would only permit expanding new industrial energy facilities if companies also come up with ways to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. If the EPA wins, Mr. Keane’s efforts to increase energy efficiency and renewable energy use will become all the more important. It will require one of the largest greenhouse gas emitting nations and its citizens to look at the efforts of businesses such as SmartPower before bringing more energy on the line. If that were the case, it would be a win-win situation for both Mr. Keane and the world on efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Verner Wilson, III, is a first-year Master of Environmental Management candidate at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. He is originally from Bristol Bay, Alaska, and obtained a bachelor’s degree in Environmental Studies in 2008 from Brown University. He previously worked for the World Wildlife Fund, as well as a coalition of Alaska Native tribes, on issues related to sustainable wild salmon fisheries, environmental justice, mining, oil and gas, and climate change.

Right after high school graduation my friend Emily and I took a road trip to Taos, New Mexico. We were on our way to a friend’s bed and breakfast to stay and enjoy the desert sun before facing the rest of our lives. We stopped at the Rio Grand Gorge Bridge and, as we left the car to admire the gorge, a homeless man pushed a cart across the bridge, gestured toward us and, from under a beard and baseball cap, called us “supermarket girls.” I grew up working for the family gardening business and, having grown many of my own vegetables and plants, I resented his comment and thought, “I am NOT a supermarket girl!” Although hardly the type of comment to raise one’s defenses, I have never forgotten his words. For some reason, that phrase has taken on new meaning over the years.

What was this man commenting on? He was, perhaps, pointing to some truth about where Emily and I were coming from, and what kind of life we had presumably led. Along our road trip in Colorado and New Mexico, Emily and I came face to face with expressions of our national agricultural production in the West: vast irrigation systems, dams, highways, satellite towns propped up by a fossil fuel economy, and drought-prone landscapes heavily irrigated or roamed by cattle. Indeed, despite both of our families’ humble origins, Emily and I were accustomed to going to the grocery store and unquestioningly buying produce for our families without any conception of how the system really functioned. So maybe we were, in a way, “supermarket girls.” I have never been comfortable with the phrase and am now exploring the implications of being part of a “supermarket society.” Of course, beneath the supermarket façade is the story behind the polished apples, shiny peppers, and perfect potatoes—this story is as illuminating as it is alarming. The tons of topsoil rushing downriver, the nationwide bee colony collapse, the already vanished forms of plant and animal life call for a better way or, as Thomas Berry calls it, the “Great Work.”

In his February 12talk, “Creating a New Food Future,” Andrew Kimbrell highlighted the ways in which industrial agriculture exhausts our soils, imperils our pollinators (the critical key to fertility), and eradicates our rich history in seed biodiversity. We are now reckoning with a system that undercuts the very foundations upon which it rests. The specter of drought across the West reveals the unfortunate fact that our water law is based on data from an unusual wet spell. Now climate change will likely reduce the Colorado River’s flow even further, the source of all that is green in much of the West and Southwest, leaving regional planners and farmers clamoring for solutions. The current water crisis in California and the likely reality of a long-term drought, points to the need to re-align our agricultural regime.

The water crisis that threatens agriculture in states like California, Arizona, and Colorado is but one of many problems embedded in an agricultural system that exhausts farmland and natural resources without replenishing them. This system, as Kimbrell reminds us, is completely unregenerative and the consumers’ “supermarket vision,” or disconnection with their own food sources, is one of its symptoms.

According to Kimbrell, as we begin to realize the vulnerability and danger involved in industrial agriculture, we should see the organic movement in the United States as the starting point, our conceptual baseline from which a greater transformation of American agriculture can occur. That is, the organic movement cannot, by itself, solve all of the problems associated with the food system as it is, but it is a worthy and necessary launch pad. Part of this change is certainly related to policy, technology, and consumer habits, to name a few, but it also has to do with the way that Americans view nature.

Many social scientists have long examined American attitudes towards nature. Thinkers such as Henry David Thoreau, John Muir, Rachel Carson, Lynn White Jr., and Thomas Berry have all observed and decried a disjointed and extractive relationship with the natural world. This, in turn, shapes the manner in which we use nature for sustenance. Historically, westerners have understood nature to be a wilderness in need of taming, unsanitary and dangerous, or a static source of goods that exist to serve humankind. People have paid too little attention the long-term effects and viability of monocropping, mass chemical and pesticide use, or cotton farming in the desert. The industrial form of agriculture and of modern life has devastated the healthy functioning of ecosystems around the globe and academics have anticipated the need not only for economic and legal change but for a far more fundamental change in perception. The historian Thomas Berry has referred to the next significant human movement as the “Great Work,” or the “transition from a period of human devastation of the Earth to a period when humans would be present to the planet in a mutually beneficial manner” (The Great Work: Our Way into the Future). Berry asserts that we must begin to recognize and reclaim our responsibility not as commanders and takers of natural resources but as members in a community that we depend on and depends on us. Americans have little sense of reciprocity between nature and their communities, and this is borne out in exhaustive forms of modern agriculture.

Values, it would seem, are as much of our common heritage as the land. The Great Work that Berry articulates so clearly, and which others like Rachel Carson, have made movements toward, expand our cultural view to recognize that "in reality there is a single integral community of the Earth that includes all its component members whether human or other than human” (The Great Work: Our Way into the Future). Our intellectual, emotional, and economic capacity for a sense of relatedness will be a central component in our response to a faltering food system and as we learn more about our launching pad, the organic movement. Kimbrell’s talk was practical and illuminating as he highlighted both the promise and limitations of the organic movement in confronting industrial agriculture—it cannot solve everything—but it is our first step out of the trench we’ve collectively dug.

This Wednesday, February 12, SmartPower President Brian Keane will kick off Yale’s Climate and Energy Bookshelf speaker series featuring new publications by renowned environmental policy thinkers including Todd Wilkinson, Mary Wood, and Tom Kizzia.

Green Is Good promotes clean, renewable energy as well as energy efficiency. It is a useful guidebook for businesses and consumers alike on how to reduce their carbon emissions by using clean energy. Mr. Keane and his company SmartPower have been recognized with numerous awards from the EPA, and Department of Energy and the State of Connecticut.

Mr. Keane provided an example to the Huffington Post of what clean energy solutions could look like. In the 2012 article before the release of Green Is Good, Keane talked about Solarize Connecticut, a partnership between his company, the Connecticut Clean Energy Finance and Investment Authority and the John Mercke Fund to increase the use of solar panels by homeowners, businesses and others in the state. Over two years later, Solarize Connecticut is still providing countless workshops and other tools to help people understand the benefits and logistics of using solar energy.

Mr. Keane’s trip to Yale will come during the same week that French President Francois Holland visits the US to have meetings with President Barack Obama and others about the lead-up to the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris. This week, both presidents wrote an article in the Washington Post stating that in 2015 they expect an ambitious agreement to address climate change. The leaders wrote: “We can expand the clean energy partnerships that create jobs and move us toward low-carbon growth…we can do more to help developing countries shift to low-carbon energy as well, and deal with rising seas and more intense storms.” It will undoubtedly be local grassroots efforts like that of Mr. Keane’s that will help the world’s leaders achieve this important global goal.

Verner Wilson, III, is a first-year Master of Environmental Management candidate at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. He is originally from Bristol Bay, Alaska, and obtained a bachelor’s degree in Environmental Studies in 2008 from Brown University. He previously worked for the World Wildlife Fund, as well as a coalition of Alaska Native tribes, on issues related to sustainable wild salmon fisheries, environmental justice, mining, oil and gas, and climate change.

By Guest Author, Eric Biber, Professor of Law, University of California Berkeley

I (Josh Galperin, Associate Director, Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy) have two forthcoming publications that argue against the growing "eat the invaders" or "invasivore" movement. Invasive species are a serious ecological and economic problem. The invasivore movement supposes that we can control biological invasions with a fork and knife. My collaborators and I see several problems with this argument. One of the leading problems is that generating enough culinary interest in an invasive species to actually impact its population will lead to cultural endearment. There are examples of invasive species, despite manifest ecological and economic damage, becoming important cultural icons. Even though it has nothing to do with food, the eucalyptus tree in California is one such example.

Let me be clear here. Cutting down eucalyptus trees to reduce fire risk and restore native plants and ecosystems is generally an environmentally sensible thing to do. It will help native plants and animals do better. And it will keep people safer. Those who argue otherwise are ignoring a lot of fairly clear ecological evidence, primarily because of other prior commitments they have (such as, logging is bad, or chemicals are bad). Sounds a little like climate skeptics/deniers to me.

In the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy’s second annual Policy Workshop Webinar Series, we looked at “Emerging Issues in Shale Gas Development” with the help of a distinguished group of experts from multiple sectors and fields. In case you missed any of our events this year, or would like to review a presentation, I have catalogued our shale gas webinars and interviews below, including links to summary blog posts and video recordings as well as additional readings, videos, and audio clips so that you can learn more about the issues that each of our speakers discussed.

The Policy Workshop Webinar Series will continue next academic year, 2013-2014, with an examination of environmental law and policy issues in the area of food and agriculture.

Emerging Issues in Shale Gas Development

September 18, 2012: Economics and Risk Assessment (Interview): As a prelude to the webinar series, Sheila Olmstead, a Fellow at Resources for the Future, discussed some of the implications of the shale gas boom. Read more and watch this interview here.

October 10, 2012: Overview of Environmental Impacts: Dr. Jim Saiers, Professor and Associate Dean of Academic Affairs at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, presented an overview of shale gas development and its implications for the environment. Read more and watch this webinar here.

November 8, 2012: Climate Impacts: Dr. Ramón Alvarez, a senior scientist at the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) presented research from a paper he recently co-authored on natural gas use and its implications for climate change. Read more and watch this webinar here.

December 5, 2012: Overview of the Current U.S. Regulatory Framework: Florida State Law Professor Hannah Wiseman provided a comprehensive overview of the current legal regimes governing shale gas development, including state and federal statutes, local zoning, agency directives, and the common law. Read more and watch this webinar here.

January 23, 2013: An Industry Perspective: Mark Boling, President of V+ Development Solutions, a division of Southwestern Energy Company, presented on “Balancing Environmental, Social and Economic Impacts of Shale Gas Development Activities.” Read more and watch this webinar here.

February 12, 2013: Electricity Markets and Clean Energy: Jeffrey Logan from the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) presented on “Natural Gas and U.S. Electric Power Futures.” Read more and watch this webinar here.

March 5, 2013: Measuring Greenhouse Gas Emissions (Interview): Dr. Garvin Heath, a senior scientist at the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), discussed research that he recently completed on the lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions from shale gas produced from Texas’ Barnett Shale. Read more and watch this interview here.

March 29, 2013: Community Impacts: Susan Phillips from public radio station WHYY in Philadelphia discussed Marcellus Shale gas development in Pennsylvania. The stories that she presented were originally reported by Ms. Phillips and her colleagues as part of StateImpact Pennsylvania, an award-winning collaboration between WHYY, National Public Radio (NPR), and WITF in Harrisburg. Read more and watch this webinar here.

April 12, 2013: An Environmental Perspective: Kate Sinding, Senior Attorney and Deputy Director of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC)’s New York Program, discussed fracking from the perspective of an environmental organization. Read more and watch this webinar here.

On Friday, March 29, as part of our Policy Workshop Webinar Series on Emerging Issues in Shale Gas Development, the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy invited Susan Phillips from public radio station WHYY in Philadelphia to discuss Marcellus Shale gas development in Pennsylvania. The stories that she presented were originally reported by Ms. Phillips and her colleagues as part of StateImpact Pennsylvania, an award-winningcollaboration between WHYY, National Public Radio (NPR), and WITF in Harrisburg.

You can watch Ms. Phillips’s full presentation below, in which she tells the story of Pennsylvania shale gas through interviews with local community members who are experiencing the effects, both good and bad, of shale gas development firsthand.

The Yale Center for Environmental Law & Policy is a joint initiative between Yale Law School and the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, and we see a lot of interesting and inspiring people come through the doors of both schools throughout the course of a year.

These visionaries will stay a few days, give a lecture or two, and then be on their way again—sometimes with very little record of their visit, the insights they’ve shared, or the passion they’ve breathed into the community inspiring action, change, and possibility.

We launched On the Environment, a podcast series hosted by Center staff and students, to better document these visits and, most importantly, to invite the larger community into the conversation we’re having here about key issues in environmental science, law and policymaking.

The first six podcasts are linked below, but please keep your eye on the On The Environment iTunes or SoundCloud sites, because we will update frequently.

We hope you enjoy the podcasts and the speakers as much as we’ve enjoyed producing the series.

Episode 2: (part 1 and part 2): Marissa Knodel talks with Julian Aguon, a writer, activist and attorney, about his work on human and indigenous rights under international law.

Episode 3: (part 1, part 2, and part 3): Aaron Reuben, a Center research assistant, talks with Rolling Stone Contributing Editor Jeff Goodell about his work, the future of environmental journalism, and geoengineering.

If you have comments or suggestions, please don’t hesitate to contact us at ycelp@yale.edu.

Most have likely seen the green and white bumpersticker declaring “No Farms No Food”. Without reservation I support the message of American Farmland Trust, the group that created and distributes this sticker. In the words of American Farmland Trust:

“The message is simple and couldn't be more clear—America's farms and ranches provide an unparalleled abundance of fresh, healthy and local food, but they are rapidly disappearing.

Ninety-one percent of America’s fruit and seventy-eight percent of our vegetables are grown near metro regions, where they are in the path of development. And America has been losing more than an acre of farmland every minute. That's why supporting local food and farms is more important than ever!”

Recently, however, I was walking to work when I passed a truck that donned the green and white sticker as well as the familiar red and black bumper sticker showing support for the National Rifle Association. Seeing these two stickers side by side, it occurred to me that the message “no farms no food” simply isn’t true. Take a quick trip to NRA.org and you will see that hunting is a pillar of their mission.

There is, in fact, food without farms and it comes from, among other places, hunting wild animals, or harvesting wild plants.

It would take too long to list all the incredible benefits of agriculture; suffice it to say that agriculture is more than just a critical part of human life today. The American Farmland Trust and likeminded organizations similarly play a critical role in reminding us that our food does come from somewhere— typically a farm—and awareness about the origins of our food is important to protecting the source. By and large that source is farms, but it is worth remembering that there is more to our food system than farms alone. To sustain our broader environment and our complete food system we need to remember the boar, bass and berries that can also nourish us.

Sobering look at sea level rise in the Northeast and the hard choices it puts before us. Do taxpayers pay to defend coastline with expensive sea walls in what looks to be a losing battle? Do emotionally-invested homeowners on the coast retreat now while their property may be at its optimal value? What can we save from the sea's rise, if anything? How will we as a society triage the many victims of this climate change harm?

I detect no real sense that policy makers have a good handle on how to resolve, or even approach, these kinds of terrible choices. Unfortunately, going forward blindly is also a choice, and one that usually doesn't end too well.

This video looks back at Earth Day April 22, 1970 and the environmental successes and challenges that Connecticut faces. Over the past 40 years, Connecticut has made great progress in cleaning up our air, waters and lands, preserving open space, protecting fish and wildlife, and protecting the public health. Watch here.